Shrinking China Job Needs Show Why GDP Slowdown May Be Tolerated – Bloomberg – “With China’s shifting demographics, that benchmark should shift as well,” said Louis Kuijs, chief China economist for Royal Bank of Scotland Plc in Hong Kong, who previously worked for the World Bank in Beijing. Labor market resilience “reduces the perceived urgency of a major policy response,” he said…he working age population is growing at 0.5 percent a year now, one-third the pace of 10 years ago, Kuijs estimates. That means the benchmark growth rate may be 7 percent, he said.

Special Report: China’s other power struggle | Reuters– The reforms sought by the Communist leadership are limited nonetheless. The party isn’t launching a fundamental attack on public ownership or pushing for widespread privatization of the state leviathans. It aims to split SOEs into smaller units or bring in more private investment to state-dominated sectors including energy, telecommunications, railways and banking, on the theory that doing so will reinvigorate the world’s second-largest economy at a time of flagging growth.

Has a segment of China’s shadow banking system been curtailed? | FT Alphaville – the game of ‘cat and mouse’ between Chinese regulators and banks is likely to continue, says Werner (who, incidentally, says the Chinese banking sector tends to be undervalued by markets right now and has ‘outperform’ ratings on CCB, ICBC and Bank of China.) And indeed, the data up to Q2 still indicated a steep growth in trust companies and wealth management products, although the former had slowed down somewhat.

China New Home Sales More than Doubled in Oct.8-14-Caijing – New house sales in 54 major Chinese cities surged 210 percent in the week through Oct.14, from the level seen before the national holiday from Oct.1-Oct.7, and continued a trend in place before the holiday, the official Securities Daily.

In China, a Move to Tiny Living Space – WSJ.com – At the research center of China’s largest property developer, China Vanke is an apartment that measures 160 square feet, about the size of a parking space. The bed folds to make seating. The shower is a vertical tube by the front door.At a price of about 835 yuan ($133) a square foot, an apartment that size is relatively affordable at the yuan equivalent of $21,500, which is around six times per-capita disposable income for China’s urban residents.

China’s Big Four banks rotate auditors | China Accounting Blog | Paul Gillis – Most alarming, however, is the reduction in fees at each of the banks (other than CCB which appears to have frozen PwC’s fee). Not only do the new auditors have to figure out these banks, they have to do it with an average fee reduction of 22% on the three banks than rotated auditors this year. That level of fee reduction is going to result in reduced audit quality, reduced partner income, or both. Probably both; I am glad I am retired from the Big Four.

Bulls and Bears Fight It Out, in Courts – NYTimes.com– Now Jon Carnes, the president of Eos Holdings, a hedge fund that is short Silvercorp, says he has been informed that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have started a formal investigation into Silvercorp, in response to a complaint filed by Mr. Carnes. He said the complaint asserted that the company had improperly financed an investigation by the local police in Luoyang, a Chinese town where a Silvercorp subsidiary is based. Kun Huang, a researcher for Eos, has been imprisoned in Luoyang since July, although no criminal charges have been filed.

Podcast -Chinese Investors Head West- Economic Observer – With Huawei’s long running tribulations in making US acquisitions, many Chinese investors are nervous to invest overseas. The coming US election and Chinese power turnover, combined with China’s economic slowdown, are also shaking up the trade situation between the two countries. In today’s podcast, we talk with Beijing-based trade lawyers Bill Rosoff and Spencer Griffith of the Akin Gump law firm.

明鏡新聞網: 明鏡獨家：劉雲山親信涉嫌貪腐情色將被「雙開」 – Mingjing reporting that Jiao Li, a trusted aide of Liu Yunshan, to be “kicked out of Party and job”/investigated. The report that Jiao Li is no longer at GAPP is from the reliable Caixin. Mingjing is not particularly reliable, though in this case there have been rumors of trouble for a while, from issues that predated CCTV job, from Jiao’s time in Liaoning…and then there was the CCTV fire…If Jiao really in trouble then this may not a positive for Liu Yunshan’s career prospects, especially for possible ascension to 18th PBSC…?

Guest post: stability first for China’s new leaders, with tough action on corruption | beyondbrics– Although any significant structural political reform is unlikely to be rolled out under the new leadership, passive reforms introduced to respond to mounting domestic challenges in the next decade may plant seeds for fundamental changes in the way China is governed beyond the Xi/Li generation. In the short to medium term, however, there is little sign of the CCP losing its grip of social and regime stability.

Growing Concerns in China about Inequality, Corruption | Pew Global Attitudes Project – expectations and credibility gaps growing, Party knows this, why some reforms likely soon, though not western liberal political reforms. wonder how honest respondents really were, could even be worse// the side effects of rapid economic growth, including the gap between rich and poor, rising prices, pollution, and the loss of traditional culture are major concerns, and there are also increasing worries about political corruption. While the Chinese have consistently rated their national and personal economic situations positively over the last few years, they are now grappling with the concerns of a modern, increasingly wealthy society.

Survey Methods | Pew Global Attitudes Project – Results for the survey in China are based on 3,177 face-to-face interviews of adults conducted from March 18 to April 15, 2012. It uses a multi-stage cluster sample stratified by China’s three regional-economic zones (which include all provinces except Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Macao), representing roughly 64% of the adult population. The sample is disproportionally urban (the sample is 55% urban, while China’s population is 50% urban)

2 U.S. Sailors Arrested in Okinawa Rape Case – NYTimes.com – Two United States Navy sailors were arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of raping a woman in Okinawa, local news reports said, an episode likely to fan anger on an island increasingly outraged over the presence of a large American base.

China should participate more in making int’l rules – People’s Daily Online – In the past, China was pushed aside in many ways under the “rules” because most of the rules were established under the auspices of Western countries and China can only adapt to and comply with them. Therefore, it is self-evident whether China will participate in the building and formulation of new international rules in front of currently changing international situation?

Leslie T. Chang: The voices of China’s workers – YouTube – In the ongoing debate about globalization, what’s been missing is the voices of workers — the millions of people who migrate to factories in China and other emerging countries to make goods sold all over the world. Reporter Leslie T. Chang sought out women who work in one of China’s booming megacities, and tells their stories.

A Look “Glorious Mission,” China’s Military-Produced Call of Duty Clone-TechinAsia – for players who want to put themselves in the shoes of the PLA, it is certainly the most realistic option out there. As for the anti-American accusations, they seem to have been quite overblown (no surprise there). Enemies are just called “enemies” and you won’t see any flags or other identifying marks in the game as far as I can tell. There’s not a lot of story, and what is there is pretty vague, but from everything I saw, this game is far more tame than any of the Western games where the PLA is the enemy.

CNN to debut monthly show about China|chinadaily.com.cn – The new monthly show On China will be hosted by CNN correspondent and anchor Kristie Lu Stout. During each 30-minute show, she will sit down with “business leaders from within China’s borders for a round-table discussion about what really drives this world power and economic giant”, CNN said in an online article on Tuesday.

Chinese Gaming Portal YY Shoots For US IPO-TechinAsia – Rumors swirled last October that YY would shoot for a US IPO – but this time the plan is for real. Last year I suggested that investors would be scared off by rampant piracy in the downloads section of Duowan, where pirated games are freely available. All that pirated material is still on the site today (fancy a “free” copy of Plants vs Zombies, anyone?), still threatening to torpedo its IPO plans.

Mo Yan’s Creative Space – NYTimes.com – But it would be intellectually lazy for distant Western observers of this situation to dismiss Mo as a literary stooge, or to assume that his several historical novels set in post-1949 China offer an officially sanitized view of China and its recent past. Since the publication of “The Garlic Ballads” in the late-1980s, Mo’s fiction has sought to lay bare the brutality, greed and corruption that has flourished under Communist rule.

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